Friday, June 11, 2010

What Makes Prepping Easier?

Just for fun, here's a few things I've found that make prepping/gardening/food preservation easier.

1. Lots of room.  Either in your yard or in your house.  For planting, building, storing.
2. Older kids.  Young ones are fun, but they'd rather play in the mud than pull weeds (okay, my older ones would too) even if that mud has your baby garden plants in it.  The older kiddos can actually be helpful.
3. Lots of time.  Tough canning everything you grow in your garden if you work a full time job or two.  Seriously.
4. Extra money.  We've made it work without much extra cash, but it sure would be easier if you have extra money to purchase the things you want or pay someone to till the garden or buy lots of peanut butter when it's on sale.
5. A cooperative spouse.  Fortunately I have this.  Some don't.
6. The right tools.  Tough to grind wheat with two rocks, although I'm sure you can if you really try.  Or can veggies without a pressure canner.  Same with building or fixing things--sometimes there is no substitute for the right tool.
7. Lots of practice.  Like anything, self reliance is learned best when you practice it often.

Don't worry if you don't have the things on the list.  Most of them I don't have either.  It just means you get to be a little more creative!  What have you found that makes it easier (or harder) to be self reliant?

4 comments:

Heidi said...

Good resources - print off information from the internet and have a few books in your personal library in case there's no electricity. Some of my must haves are a current canning book so I know processing times and the Encyclopedia of Country Living.

marci357 said...

a GOOD attitude :)
and a GOOD sense of humor - for all the things that can/and do/ go wrong!

And Knowledge that what you are feeding yourself/your family, is better for you than store bought :)
Helps keep you focused when tired.

marci357 said...

For prepping, canning....
Upbeat music on or a book-on-tape to listen to :)
That sure helps me! Don't even notice how much time it is taking.

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to move where I can start prepping.